Hello everyone!
As we announced in our dev blog back in May, we’ll be taking another gradual step towards replacing Starbases with Upwell structures in our August release.
The August change will be to remove the bonuses from Starbase Reprocessing Arrays, Assembly Arrays and Labs.
This means that starting in August, Starbase Reprocessing Arrays will only provide a 50% refining yield, Starbase Assembly Arrays will not provide any material or time bonuses to manufacturing jobs, and Starbase Labs will not provide any time bonuses to research, copy, or invention jobs.
These structures will continue to work for the near future, but without their previous advantages over stations.
Any jobs started in one of these structures before the August patch will complete with the bonuses intact.
These structure have been impossible to build since May, and their usage is now very low since more convenient and powerful alternatives exist.
In a future patch we will then make the further step of beginning to remove these items and compensate their owners appropriately.
When will we finally be hearing details on our current POS systems and their refunds/not refunds/events/who knows?
Personally I think it’d be fair to trade in our existing gear for something roughly equivalent in the new system. It keeps away from flooding the markets with either isk or mins, and avoids a lot of the rage unsubbing.
Understood, but the Thukker rig is way more expensive and offers lower ME bonus than the Thukker Array. Also with the Basic Capital Component Manufacturing Efficiency Rig, we now have
7.02 ME for Lowsec vs. 4.2 for Null, compared to 15 vs 2 before. Is this a subsequent nerf to Lowsec, because Capital Production has been so low there @CCP_Fozzie?
Will weapon batteries get some other use like being anchored around citadels, or they will be removed with the other POS structures too?
And if they will be removed, when will faction weapon battery BPCs stop dropping? I keep finding them, but it’s really hard to sell them lately, so some of the rare loot worth basically the same as a piece of carbon.
I sold my POS around Christmas. Tried renting for a few months but, after the facility I was using ran out of fuel for the 3rd time I decided to build my own Raitaru. It cost more than the POS, burns more fuel and, for the most part, bonuses aren’t quite as good. But everyone else has the same problem - the playing field remains reasonably level.
On the plus side, it’s a hell of a lot easier to work in than the POS and I’m still making a decent profit.
With changes in the Industry interface you guys seemed to have bugged things up so badly that it is often IMPOSSIBLE to install jobs in POS structures which maybe one reason their use is now low !!
Been trying a few times over past couple of weeks along with other corp mates to install research jobs at a lo sec POS and very occasionally it works though often the interface just doesn’t recognise the location or doesn’t’ want to change to the type of (supported) job we’re trying to do.
Today with the help of 2 corp mates tried doing a 3 to 7 day ME research job in a POS and 3 it accepted while all others won’t be allowed cause :
“Input material inventory location not selected”
“Output material Inventory location not selected”
“Output location is no longer available”
We can select the locations for Manufacturing on this lab tho that’s not much help for ME research.
Output location is showing and IS valid so yet another case of bugged interface it seems
ONE BIG advantage POSes have/had was flexibility.
You can do manufacturing and then swap to research or reactions and have the most economic results while the new Engineering complexes only give you the most optimum results if you rig them which then ties them to having more limited function … or we just have to use more of them at extra cost.
All this just results in extra cost and higher prices or fewer people producing certain items - leading to more monopoly in the market (and higher prices)
But I guess the economy and efficiency aren’t a big focus as they would be in realistic environments cause all Eve is concerned about is “Content” (read potential things going boom).
Also just some feedback on the new refining structures. The models look cool though I hope the ring isn’t collidable
I would think the undock point would be better located towards the top of the structure away from the ring to make access less impeded by the structure itself!
seeing how they would be focused on the moon for operations then it would make more sense to have the ports for accessing the structure higher up the structure away from the moon (and the ring formation) !
Got a question since you have always seemed like a reasonable chap, what do you think of adding PI tiers to structures like yours (Raitaru, etc), in other words we can now export our raw PI stuff, transport it to a facility and make higher level items (tier 2,3,4, etc), but keep the abilities to make them planet side if you want to do so, the way PI is now is so cumbersome.
While I get people’s fear of prices for PI products falling I also think it will work itself out over time, but also facility owners and custom office holders will see their income grow as more people export and produce, why do you think do_little?
They’d actually get less as you pay a substantially smaller amount of tax on P1 goods exporting to the POCO than you do for P2, P3 and P4. Every planet would becomeP1 production planets, with an overall drop in tax income most likely.
I would like to see P3-P4 processing moved to a service module for refineries. Leave P0-P2 alone except for a UI refresh (long overdue and shouldn’t be difficult - “low hanging fruit” for the devs - make a lot of people happy).
I haven’t worked out the details but getting part of the PI process out in space where people can shoot at it seems like a good idea and it would provide additional incentive to build refineries in highsec - hard to justify just for reprocessing.
Correct, that’s the ideal, more movement of PI materials, if someone moves a ship full of T1 or 2 products and get blown apart it will be painful, but at the same time it is not one sided, there is the added benefit of getting these products either to market or for builds for the people involved in PI I took a look at Jita a bit ago and there is a plenty of PI stuff and the prices don’t really seem like their too competitive.
Anyway it would be a reason for me to place some facilities in low sec because I wouldn’t have to be there all the time so the risk is minimal for a good gain to risk retrieval of the PI stuff and run in and out, every load a victory every loss a learning opportunity, you can’t really mine in low sec so for me there is no reason for me to go, I don’t do the other things because there is not enough gain/reason to risk, I don’t do it now for one reason, it’s cumbersome, there are enough opportunities for me in high sec, they definitely dont pay out as quickly but PI is more of a passive small welfare income but improving the way it’s mechanics work would go far to make it something worthwhile to pursue if you can turn a profit more quickly by producing in a facility.
I made the suggestion of reworking orbital rounds to cause production to slow down… if space can affect PI in that way it doesn’t change all too much from a visible standpoint, i’d think it be less time consuming coding wise since orbital rounds just have to be reworked a little to accomplish this.
